


and all the moments in between

by socallmedaisy



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socallmedaisy/pseuds/socallmedaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all of her life Sunday mornings have had the same routine: wake up early, breakfast with her parents before her father goes to prepare for mass while she gets dressed and follows with her mother. (Four times Paige hated herself and one time she didn't.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all the moments in between

**Author's Note:**

> Because Alison said that thing in the flashback about Paige's father being a deacon.

For all of her life Sunday mornings have had the same routine: wake up early, breakfast with her parents before her father goes to prepare for mass while she gets dressed and follows with her mother.

It happens automatically, following the same well worn tracks, from before she can remember to what she assumes will be the rest of her life, until maybe she’s the one in the kitchen having breakfast with her kid and her husband, only that part’s a little fuzzy like she can’t see it the way she’s supposed to.

She sits in the pews with the church clothes—the dresses her mother makes her wear when she’s younger, and the ones she makes herself wear when she’s older—hanging on her heavily, folded in on herself and wishing no one could see, and the words she hears settle into her and push her further down, so sometimes it’s hard to just stand up at the end and follow her mom outside, where her dad kisses their cheeks and says he won’t be long. 

She understands that this is the life her parents lead, but that not everyone is the same, because when she says something about it at school some of the kids look at her like they don’t understand and it’s like this switch flipping in her brain, something about the ability to choose that her father tells her God gave them but she never really understood before, but she gets then, sitting in her desk in her third grade classroom. 

And it’s like they’re supposed to choose things for themselves, but then she’s looking for her English classroom on the first day of middle school and this girl who looks just as lost as she feels is smiling at her and telling her she had a class there this morning and she just needs to go up the stairs and to the left.

“Thanks,” Paige says hesitantly, and then a blonde girl is calling “Emily!” and the girl who gave her directions smiles wide again before going back to her friends.

+

She practices hiding in church.

She sits low in her seat, slouched down with her arms wrapped around her middle, pretending like her head is bowed in prayer so no-one disturbs her. Her mom glances at her sometimes, but when it happens every week she starts to forget to check, and Paige thinks it’s working, like maybe if she tried hard enough she could just disappear.

It’s about timing, about sitting down before everyone gets settled so no-one disturbs her, hoping she looks like a good Catholic, like her father taught her well. She’s never had good timing, always been too awkward and too stilted in her movements, but she counts in her head until she can do this week in, week out, sitting there like the girl she wishes she could be instead of the one she is.

She sees Emily everywhere. She’s at school and in her her head and in her dreams, and when she’s sitting there with her head bowed she starts to pray for it to stop, but the prayers twist until she’s just wishing for Emily, and she’s not supposed to want that, she’s not supposed to want—

She stops praying, at least in church. She watches Emily in the cafeteria at school and that’s like a prayer, until the blonde girl who called after Emily on that first day sees her looking and everything goes wrong.

After Alison, after the letter, after the first time that she takes the razor and— 

She prays for it to stop again, forces herself to keep her eyes low and stop looking, until she walks into swim tryouts and Emily’s there laughing at this thing another girl is saying and she almost turns around and walks back out.

She’s not awkward in the water, she’s not wrong in the water. She can’t hear what people are saying with the water in her ears and the only sounds are people cheering for the Sharks when she breaks the surface to take a breath. It’s like being in another world, like being reborn, until Emily is waiting for her to finish so she can dive in and take over, until Emily is—

Until Emily is under the water too and it’s her hand that’s holding her there.

Riding her bike through the rain in the dark makes her feel the same way being under water does, and she rides further and further, stays out later, until her parents are asking her if everything’s okay or there’s something they need to talk about.

The words almost fall out but she sucks them back down, because.

She’s never had good timing, but the way Emily looks at her on her porch makes her wish she did, and then when her bike slides out from under her on the way home and she lies in the street before she forces herself to get up she thinks—

God finally answered her prayer.

+

Kissing Emily is better than any mass she’s ever been to, but she thinks people can see it on her, that they can tell she likes—

She knows Sean from from the non-denominational activities church life in a small town forces you into when your parents are involved in the organisational committees and he smiles at her dad and shakes his hand when he comes to pick her up, in this way that makes her wish again that she could just be that girl she prayed so hard to be.

Sean smiles at her and holds her hand, but he’s not Emily, he’s not deep brown eyes and soft skin, but she’s gotten so good at hiding, at being invisible even when she’s in public, that she somehow convinces herself that he could be.

Emily doesn’t hide, and it makes her peek her head out, just for a second, just to see what it would be like. In the woods, it’s easy, but on the stage it’s harder, until Emily takes the microphone and they’re hiding together, safety in numbers, until Emily stares at her lips and her eyes and darts forward to kiss her, the only thing she ever wanted, but too much all at once.

For the first time in her life she skips church, wraps herself in her duvet and tells her parents she’s too sick to go, irrationally sure that if she does she won’t be able to hide, that she’ll wear Emily’s kiss like a badge around her neck and everyone will be able to see.

Emily tells her that everything will change but what she doesn’t know is that everything already has, because when she sees Sean again she can’t pretend anymore that she wants to—

She’s stopped praying because she’s forgotten how to pray for something that isn’t Emily, forgotten how to kneel and bow her head and do anything other than breathe out an _Emily_ and breathe in an _I lo—_

She spends her Sunday researching support groups on her computer, but there isn’t enough support groups in the world to help with the way she’s feeling, until she’s slamming the laptop lid shut and crying angry hot tears into her pillow, and standing up the girl Emily sends her to and— 

She’s never had good timing, but she wants to do better, and every morning she sits at the table eating her breakfast and trying to swallow the words down with her cereal, because even if it’s not about Emily she doesn’t think she can do this anymore. She’s just so tired of all of it, of her parents looking at her and asking what happened with Sean, and why she looked relieved instead of upset when she swim season ended, of the way sitting in church makes her feel and how hiding hurts her the way Alison did, how she’s hurting herself and she can’t—

They’re supposed to choose things for themselves, even if there are some things that they don’t, and next Sunday she prays for strength, before sucking in a breath in the backseat of the car on the way home, and says—

+

She sits taller in the pews at church now, and her dad smiles at her when he catches her eye during mass. She hears the words differently, no longer weighing her down, understanding some of them for maybe the first time in her life and wondering if her parents do too.

Emily was right about everything changing, even if neither of them thought they could change like this.

She’s never had good timing, and she sees Emily with Maya and knows she missed her chance, until suddenly Maya isn’t there but Emily is and they’re outside the Grille and she’s reading the situation all wrong the same way she always did.

She means what she says about Emily deserving someone better, but better doesn’t mean her, and she gets that for maybe the first time after, when they’re at school and Emily is staring at her phone desperately every time she sees her in the hall. It’s not about her being better for Emily than Maya, but about someone just being better, the kind of person that Emily has always deserved, and she starts to pray that Emily finds that person when she’s kneeling in the church with her eyes closed, because anything would hurt less than seeing the way Emily gets sadder the longer Maya is away.

She means what she says at the ball, about being friends and wiping the slate clean, and she believes it until Emily’s on her doorstep, leaning into her and slurring her words, six months after the worst news either of them have ever heard.

She believes it when she helps her inside, her fingers curling into the fabric of Emily’s shirt, and when Emily’s hand is warm against her neck, her breath hot against her cheek. She believes it until Emily is looking at her and her other arm is finding the small of her back, until she’s leaning forward and kissing her, wet and openmouthed, and Paige remembers to kiss her back.

She forgets about it when she’s in the kitchen, and then she remembers again when she comes back, when the door’s open and Emily is gone, and she doesn’t know what to do.

She’s never had good timing.

She prays to God to just make her forget it, because she thinks Emily has, or she doesn’t want to talk about it, but it just burns into her memory even more, weighing her down the same way the priest’s words used to, the way Alison’s words used to, until the confession is fighting its way out of her throat too.

She prays for the courage to say the thing she has to, the same way she did once before.

She’s supposed to choose things for herself, even if she has no choice at all.

She tells Emily knowing she’s never going to be the better person she needs, and she knows this is it now, as far as they can go. She twists her hands to stop them reaching for Emily because Emily is pulling away—pushed away really, by her—and when Emily leaves, she runs home as fast as she can, her feet slapping against the sidewalk as she tries to forget.

Sometimes, she thinks this whole thing was a dream, a bad dream and then a good dream and then a bad dream again, so when Emily is there in front of her in her backyard she thinks her mind is playing tricks on her again. She believes it is, until Emily takes a step closer and starts to speak, about looking for people and knowing what she was doing and—

Until Emily’s hand is warm on her cheek and urging her to look back up, until they’re both moving together and— 

+

For all of her life Sunday mornings have had the same routine: wake up early, breakfast with her parents before her father goes to prepare for mass while she gets dressed and follows with her mother.

Until this, until now, until Emily. Until she’s riding her bike through sunny early morning streets to go and have breakfast with her sleepy eyed girlfriend, who kisses her good morning and asks how she can possibly be awake at this hour while she leans into her shoulder at the table, after her dad kisses her forehead as he leaves and her mom smiles at her in her pants and shirt and vest and tells her she’ll meet her at the church.


End file.
